Reach for the sky

He's a war hero who has a problem with authority, a conservative who doesn't believe in tax cuts. And a victory in the New Hampshire primary might, just might, see this Republican maverick becoming the next US president. Martin Kettle watches John McCain win over the public and the political pundits

Two glossy campaign hand-outs, each piled high on the table at the entrance of every meeting he addresses here in New Hampshire, go straight to the heart of why a lot of romantics and even some realists think John McCain may become the next president of the United States in November.

The first consists of a black and white picture. It shows a young pilot posing by his fighter aircraft, cocky and cool. The second shows an older man, white-haired now and a little chubbier, but with the same knowing and confident smile. Under the picture the words just say The John McCain Story.

And what a story it is. Grandfather and father both US admirals. A testosterone-charged, roustabout youth. Nearly fails to graduate from the US naval academy at Annapolis. Sent to Vietnam as a pilot. Shot down over Haiphong in 1967. Pulled from the sea, body broken, and interned in the prison the GIs called the Hanoi Hilton. Tortured. Beaten. Repeatedly offered a preferential early release, which he refuses. Spends five-and-a-half years as a prisoner of war.

He returns, still on crutches, when a peace deal is signed. His marriage cannot stand the strain. He remarries, to Cindy Hensley. Stands for congress as a Republican. Succeeds Barry Goldwater in the senate. Now running for president. Ladies and gentlemen, the John McCain story.

Contrast McCain's story with that of his principal Republican rival, George W Bush, another likeable man with an agreeably misspent youth. But there the resemblance ends. Where McCain's adulthood has been seared by death and war, Bush's has been gifted to him by privilege and his presidential dad. When McCain published his autobiography last year, he called it Faith of My Fathers. If Bush wrote a similar life story, one reviewer suggested, he would have to call it Friends of My Father's.

As McCain campaigned last week in New Hampshire, where the polls show him ahead in that state's all important first-in-the-nation February 1 primary, people arrive at McCain's meeting in Franklin bearing copies of his book.

"I see some of you have my book," McCain says, as he begins to warm up the packed crowd. "I wouldn't want to hype it. It costs $24.95; it's 16 weeks on the bestsellers; it's available from Amazon.com." McCain grins and the audience laughs at his cheek.

If McCain was just a conservative military man with a brave war record running for office, he would be easy to pigeonhole. But it's not that simple. McCain appeals to conservatives and radicals alike, not just to the ageing veterans whose welfare he constantly champions but also to the young first-time voters who find the other candidates too boring and cautious to hold their attention.

McCain is a Republican independent. For someone who has lived so much of his life under service discipline, his record is liberally littered with rebellion and insubordination. A prankster and hustler at the academy, he is now the most iconoclastic member of the 55-strong Republican majority in the US senate. On two issues in particular, tobacco and campaign finance reform, he has set himself apart from the Republican establishment. No candidate in this year's race has more powerful enemies within his own party than McCain.

This audacity is delivered with a charm, humour and confidence which delights his supporters and infuriates his enemies. McCain's campaign hallmark is his informality and accessibility. In town hall meetings around New Hampshire, he chats and answers any question. His minders do not mind - that's his style, and the media and his supporters love it.

"I find that brief remarks are the most popular," he tells his audience in Franklin, cracking a few jokes before taking questions on a bewildering range of topics. It's hard to think of a politician who appears more at ease for so much of the time. Certainly not Bush, nor the two Democratic presidential hopefuls, Al Gore and Bill Bradley.

They ask him about everything from pollution to Russia, from health to pornography, and most of the time he has something interesting to say. He is brilliant at excoriating the Clinton administration's foreign policy. "A photo-op, poll-driven foreign policy," he often dubs it. Other times, he calls it "foreign policy as social work".

Not surprisingly, he is hot on military issues. Though he supported Clinton over Kosovo, he is scathing about the administration's tactics there. "Planes dropping bombs from 15,000ft, killing innocent people. There's something fundamentally immoral about that."

During the Kosovo crisis, he says, the US moved an aircraft carrier from the Pacific to that theatre. "That was the first time since 1945 that we didn't have an aircraft carrier in the Pacific. Suppose that North Korea had chosen that moment to do something."

Foreign policy, though, won't win or lose him the race for the nomination. Taxes might. While Bush offers a massive tax-cutting programme of half a trillion dollars over five years - promising "tax cuts, so help me God" in last week's New Hampshire debate - McCain remains steadfastly in the mainstream with most Democrats, in favour of some tax cuts, but not for the rich, an astonishing piece of audacity for a Republican.

"I believe that rather than spending the surplus on tax cuts we have to make sure that social security is solvent," he tells the Franklin audience. "To use it all in tax cuts is a risky business. I know it sounds populist, but I'm not sure that millionaires and billionaires need a tax cut."

He stands on a small platform in the middle of the hall holding a microphone. He never explicitly exploits his suffering, but everyone in the hall knows he cannot raise his arms above the shoulder because of his wounds, left untreated and neglected in Hanoi. Whenever a veteran speaks, McCain is visibly moved. Tears glisten more than once.

Behind him is a banner that says Restoring Respect - McCain. He travels in a bus that he calls the Straight Talk Express. His television ads say The Character To Do Things Right. Though he has a legendary temper, he is unfailingly courteous on the stump. When anyone tells him about their own military experience - and lots of older voters do, often showing him photographs of themselves in their uniformed days - he always says "Thank you for serving".

"Look at that man," says an awestruck staffer. "This guy is not stressed. He's having such a good time." More seasoned heads have been turned by McCain too. Bill Bennett, Ronald Reagan's education secretary and former "drugs tsar", told me in New Hampshire: "He brings back to the Oval Office what people have been missing. When he comes on TV, instead of people changing the channel they'll turn up the volume."

McCain's openness to the press is counter-cultural in these times of limited access, over-anxious staffers, and ubiquitous security details. On the ride back from Franklin, 10 of us sit around in the back of the bus shooting the breeze with the candidate, while he talks at length about the campaign and the world.

He tells us that he is confident about his opposition to massive tax cuts. "People don't press for them. That tells me that they want to pay down the debt, to protect social security. Most people are doing well. They feel a responsibility to those who might not be."

All this has inevitably bred doubts in parts of the media. "It is a cliche in journalism circles these days to grouse that the media, in their coverage of McCain, are acting like schoolgirls at a Ricky Martin concert," wrote Eron Shosteck in the prestigious National Journal last week.

"But the near-unanimity with which the media seem to have fallen in love with McCain is unprecedented in modern presidential politics.

"His strategy of giving the media unlimited access has to be having an effect on his coverage. Indeed, some have even speculated that, in return for being so open, McCain has benefited from smitten reporters who have not reported potentially damaging comments an unguarded McCain has made in interviews."

For there is another McCain that the world rarely sees. The Arizona Republic has repeatedly claimed that "it is time the rest of the nation learned about the John McCain we know in Arizona", and said there was "reason to seriously question whether he has the temperament, and the political approach and skills, we want in the next president".

Two years ago, the Phoenix New Times went even further, calling McCain "a mean-spirited, hot-tempered, opportunistic, philandering, hypocritical political climber who married a comely beer heiress and used her daddy's money to get elected to congress in a state he can hardly call home".

Last week, as if on cue, the McCain campaign hit a potentially serious glitch. The Boston Globe reported that McCain had used his position on a senate committee to press the federal communications commission to expedite its approval of a television station purchase by Paxson Communications, owned by a McCain supporter, Lowell Paxson. McCain has made four campaign trips in Paxson's private jet in recent months.

McCain tried to brush the allegation off, but last Thursday's debate with Bush, held at the University of New Hampshire, hung on how McCain handled the issue under the television lights. Wasn't this hypocrisy, or at least poor judgment, the debate moderator asked McCain. His response was, by his standards, wary and long-winded, betraying an uncharacteristic anxiety not to say anything either glib or off-message.

Rather than drive home his advantage, Bush said he was more concerned by McCain's preoccupation with campaign finance reform than this issue, but it had still been a difficult day for a man who presents himself as Mr Clean. "If you're explaining you're losing," said Bush's media strategist after the debate.

In a bar afterwards, McCain reviews his performance with supporters. He cracks jokes, pumps up his team. "There's only 26 days, four hours and six minutes before the polls open," McCain tells them. "We'll be entertaining and informative and we'll be able to take the positions that we believe in. Let me just give you an example. Cindy has asked me to give a 45-minute speech on the North Korean nuclear build-up." The campaign workers collapse in laughter and applause, as they always do.

Can McCain win? It's definitely an outside bet. He is ahead in New Hampshire, one of those states where independents, who love McCain, can vote in the primary.

Bush's cash juggernaut and superior organisation give him the advantage almost everywhere else. If McCain wins New Hampshire, though, he'll be on a roll that could change everything. Yet the party establishment, lined up behind Bush, is prepared in states where McCain has hardly campaigned yet.

The toughest fight for McCain is the one for the nomination. If he wins at the Republican convention in July, his broad appeal could make him a very plausible candidate against the Democrats in November.

President McCain? A First Lady called Cindy? As Bill Bradley likes to say of his own insurgent campaign, it can happen.